All things related to multicast

["William F. Maton Sotomayor" <>]

On Wed, 1 Jun 2011, Zenon Mousmoulas wrote:

> One thing I forgot: The NLANR/DAST beacon seems to up and running again today:
> http://beacon.dast.nlanr.net/

Until the community decides, anyone is free to aim their 1.4 version of 
the beacon at k2.nrc.ca.

> -----?????? ??????-----
> ???: 
>
>  ?? ?????? Zenon Mousmoulas
> ????????: ??? 1/6/2011 8:32 ??
> ????: Debbie Fligor; Multicast Working Group
> ????: RE: NCSA Beacon page gone after 5/30/2011
>
> Hi Debbie,
>
> you have a point about the unicast updates with mbeacon, on the other hand I suppose 
> that could be one of the reasons why it was reported that "the code wasn't 
> designed for the number of hosts it is often [currently] tracking".
>
> You are right again that dbeacon also seems to be abandoned. In fact, I just 
> noticed that mbeacon v1.4 was published on SourceForge on 2011-02-05, with 
> the following note included in the ChangeLog:
>
> Beacon v1.4-0                   February 4, 2011
> * Set udp socket buffer sizes as large as OS limits allow.
>
> * Build shared libraries using -fPIC
>
> * Add a FreeBSD rc.d startup script.
>
> On the other hand, dbeacon has these probably important (nowadays) features:
> - IPv6
> - SSM
>
> So the question is: Are there any other/better options for beacon software?
>
> BTW, when the dbeacon code was declared abandoned, about one year ago, it was 
> re-licensed with an MIT license and published on github: 
> http://github.com/hugosantos/dbeacon
>
>
> As for what group to use, the bottom line is it doesn't matter that much. Despite GLOP 
> or RFC6014 assignments, I don't think anyone stops anyone else from using each other's 
> address space, or that would technically make much sense anyway. Nonetheless, for IPv4 
> ASM specifically, I would personally be in favor of using something 
> "neutral", so in this sense I would suggest either of the following:
> - Consider applying for an assignment in the AD-HOC Block III (233.252.0.0/14), risking 
> rejection because such an application could be perhaps debated to imply the 
> resurrection of an "mbone", and also accepting the delay associated with the 
> review/approval process, or even simply (ab)use a group in the MCAST-TEST-NET block 
> (233.252.0.0/24, reserved for example.com type of use).
> - Just use a memorable group address from the GLOP block, that is not already 
> used by the assignee, after asking for his permission, of course. According 
> to such criteria the ideal candidate would be, IMHO, 233.4.5.6, assigned to 
> AS 1029; I don't know who that is, but see: 
> http://whois.arin.net/rest/asn/AS857/pft
>
> To conclude, I agree that all it takes is agreeing on a group to use, as you 
> noted. I would add to that: a number of sites must join this beacon, so that 
> critical mass is achieved. This relates to my previous suggestion about 
> jump-starting such an initiative.
>
> Best regards,
> Z.
>
> -----?????? ??????-----
> ???: 
>
>  ?? ?????? Debbie Fligor
> ????????: ??? 1/6/2011 12:03 ??
> ????: Multicast Working Group
> ????.: Debbie Fligor
> ????: Re: NCSA Beacon page gone after 5/30/2011
>
> I'll miss the unicast updates to the server. Unless there's some other 
> out-of-band way of reporting that you're trying to run dbeacon, if multicast 
> isn't working for a site you can't tell it is there.
>
> that said, I agree that dbeacon is easier to keep running, but even it's no 
> longer under development.  how much interest is there really in doing this?  
> I offered to donate a group address for this a couple of years ago, but 
> someone (Caren?) said to wait they were about to spin something up.
>
> we run 2 different dbeacon groups, one for our campus and one for our 
> regional net to see our local connectivity.  We have one host on each network 
> participate in the other for reachability testing.  having one host from each 
> also participating in a global group should be fairly easy to build.  There 
> is no central server that needs to be built for dbeacon, all we need to do is 
> agree on a group to use.
>
> I can allocate a group for this out of our 233. or 234. space if that would 
> help get it started.
>
>
> -----
> -debbie
> Debbie Fligor, n9dn       Network Engineer, CITES, Univ. of Il
> email: 
>
>           <http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/fligor>
>                   "My turn."  -River Tam
>
>
>
>
>
> On May 19, 2011, at 9:50, Zenon Mousmoulas wrote:
>
> > I think it's about time the legacy mbeacon was shutdown and replaced by 
> > dbeacon, where all participating beacons would also be running the reporting 
> > CGI script (and providing public access to it), so that we can finally see 
> > the full picture about international multicast connectivity and eliminate the 
> > reporting SPoF.
>
> > I would also take this opportunity to suggest that the number of 
> > participating beacons be voluntarily restricted to one per 
> > campus/regional/national network so that we can really get the picture 
> > mentioned above; and that also an IPv6 instance of the beacon (embedded 
> > RP+SSM) should run alongside the IPv4 beacon, where possible.
>
> > Admittedly this is not an easy task, but if someone (e.g. Internet2) were to 
> > jumpstart such an initiative, I am confident that a large number of 
> > sites/networks would be quick to join in. I can say that GRNET NOC has been 
> > contemplating such a thing (especially decommissioning mbeacon) for quite 
> > some time.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Zenon Mousmoulas
> > GRNET
> >
> > PS: What is missing from dbeacon is non-interactive monitoring and alerting. 
> > Maybe dbeacon could be enhanced or one could parse its' log. Deciding when to 
> > raise alarms, however, would be a tricky subject.
> >
> > -----?????? ??????-----
> > ???: 
> >
> >  ?? ?????? Scott Bertilson
> > ????????: ??? 19/5/2011 12:21 ??
> > ????: Curtis, Bruce
> > ????.: Multicast Working Group
> > ????: Re: NCSA Beacon page gone after 5/30/2011
> >
> > I've talked to people at NCSA several times over the last several years
> > (usually asking them to restart the server) since they took it over and
> > they've consistently said they'd really like to unload it.  One of the
> > biggest reasons is that the code wasn't designed for the number of hosts it
> > is often currently tracking and that or something else causes the app to
> > bomb repeatedly.  Too bad there isn't some sort of multicast tracking tool
> > included in the perfSONAR toolkit.  I've never thought to ask, but I wonder
> > if they would consider it.  If so, it would probably be better to build it
> > using dbeacon rather than using this ancient chunk of perl.  Maybe they
> > would allow something to be included but defaulted to disabled.
> >
> > Scott
> >
> > On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 5:24 PM, Curtis, Bruce 
> > <>wrote:
> >
> > > I see that the NCSA Beacon page will be gone after 5/30/2011.
> > >
> > > http://beacon.dast.nlanr.net/
> > >
> > > Looks like they are looking for someone to take over hosting the multicast
> > > beacon.
> > >
> > > ---
> > > Bruce Curtis                         
> > >
> > > Certified NetAnalyst II                701-231-8527
> > > North Dakota State University


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